this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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I mostly lurk here, and I know we've had this discussion come up a number of times since Discord's age verification changes were announced, but I figured this video offers value for the walkthrough and comparative analysis. Like me, the video authors aren't seasoned self-hosters, and I've still got a lot to learn. Stoat and Fluxer both look appealing to me for my needs, but Stoat seemingly needs self-hosted servers to route through their master server (unless I'm missing something stupid) and I replicated the 404 for Fluxer's self-hosting documentation seen in the video, so it's looking like I'm leaning toward a Matrix server of some kind. Hopefully everyone looking for the Discord exit ramp is closer to finding it after this video.

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[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Got a link that's not YouTube?

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I don't. And I don't know if they put their videos elsewhere.

[–] msokiovt@feddit.online 1 points 47 minutes ago

You can use an Invidious link, actually. I do this a lot.

For @quick_snail@feddit.nl as follows: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=kpjcmXbmMVM

[–] Laggindragon@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I've been getting by just fine with a combination of Telegram and Element.

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 37 minutes ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
IP Internet Protocol
VPN Virtual Private Network
XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ('Jabber') for open instant messaging

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 16 acronyms.

[Thread #178 for this comm, first seen 17th Mar 2026, 08:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 22 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

What I'm upset about is the absolute wealth of information that will be forever trapped behind Discord. What ever happened to good old fashioned forums? Hell, even a subreddit would at least have been scrapable. If there's a mass migration away from Discord then all that information just gets lost. Example that Lemmings might care about - CachyOS has a forum, but I've seen the vast majority of troubleshooting and user input made on their Discord channel.

[–] aquovie@lemmy.cafe 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Old fashioned forums are old fashioned. Circular logic but there's a lot holding them back.

  • Create a new account for every single niche forum? No thanks. We need a federated solution.
    • Lemmy/Piefed/etc is almost there
  • Antiquated restrictions (e.g. Log in to view images)
  • Antiquated UI - People want emojis, reactions, rich media, etc
  • PHP paid the bills once upon a time but now it's hard to get anyone excited to make big new features for forum software
[–] gdog05@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

You've got some points but I would argue that antiquated UI will be what saves the Internet. Keeping out bots and AI scrapers with good old fashioned phpBBS systems that have been around for twenty years will be our clean data as we build systems outside of AI and the techbro properties.

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

What I’m upset about is the absolute wealth of information that will be forever trapped behind Discord. What ever happened to good old fashioned forums?

Rather than paying for hosting and operational costs that goes with a forum, social media and the desire for immediacy happened as Yahoo created Groups, then Facebook followed suit with their own.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 11 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

What I'm upset about is the absolute wealth of information that will be forever trapped behind Discord.

omg, you guys are almost there. you're so close, I can feel it.

so....why is the information locked behind a corporate entity?

almost got it

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Because people prefer convenience to privacy and accessibility, I guess? If there was an easy way to scrape/crawl discord data I would be hoarding everything I could to repost on lemmy or something but AFAIK there are no easily automated ways to access it.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

and that's no accident. it's by design.

creating a community is neat, but many are started irresponsibly. they don't take into consideration how to move if things "change".

people just willingly and blindly trust corporate suppliers because they do "so much stuff". not a care in the world as day by day their dependency grows.

[–] TrippinMallard@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

That's why my side project energy has been focused on making decentralized solutions infrastructure more appliance-like reliability and boring. So app environment on top can have as close to equivalent advantage as centralized solutions.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago

As a Giant Bomb fan, it's somewhat renewed interest in forums over there from the operators and users. Discord was always a bad forum anyway, but it was great for immediately being able to have a conversation with people to find answers to problems.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 107 points 1 day ago (12 children)

Seeing Teamspeak outlive Discord just keeps making me laugh.

[–] iamthetot@piefed.ca 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"outlive" Discord is quite the exaggeration. Let's not pretend that we're not a vocal minority here, and that Discord will keep trucking just fine.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 5 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Even if the age verification wasn't a thing, I think the enshittification would set in eventually. So it's not going anywhere for now, but I'm pretty sure the investors will want their money back sooner or later.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 48 points 1 day ago

Teamspeak lived long enough to see an exodus from Discord, but that doesn't mean Discord is dying.

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[–] ComradePenguin@lemmy.ml 14 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

I am so pissed that Element or any other Matrix app does not support push to talk OR a minimum noise gate. If it did it would clearly get tons of new users, it would be pretty much no question which plattform to replace discord with

[–] littleomid@feddit.org 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Whilst that’s one of the few things that bugs me with element, let’s not pretend that a lack of PTT or noise gate is the reason for everybody not switching to matrix.

[–] ComradePenguin@lemmy.ml 2 points 19 hours ago

Maybe not, but it would probably grow immensly. The exodus from discord is pretty significant, and matrix is mentioned again and again. It does not have to be that many more users in % from Discord to make matrix a lot more popular than it is today

[–] Svinhufvud@sopuli.xyz 30 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I have tried XMPP, Matrix and now I've settled on Mumble.

Me and my fellows mostly just need a voice room or a couple to sit in, and Mumble does that best out of these three, in my opinion.

I recommend giving Mumble a try as it is super easy to set up and use. Users don't need to even create accounts to join servers.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago

Mumble was the primary choice for EVE Online groups.

You can literally have thousands of users on the same server.

In EVE, during big fleet fights (like 1000+ people on the same "team"), you can have a hierarchy of fleet commanders/wing commanders/squad leaders where voice travels down the chain of command, but not up.

Also the certificate based security with ACLs is just unmatched. You can set it up exactly how you want.

Also easy to integrate with, which is important for something like EVE.

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 9 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I second this. My gaming group probably won't leave discord for the foreseeable future but Mumble is probably where we'd go if we did. IMO all these Discord alternatives are trying to do everything Discord does, when even Discord can't pull it off sustainably at their scale.

I don't want federation. I don't want it to scale to infinite concurrent users. What I want is something simple I can plonk on a crusty old laptop running Proxmox or a Raspberry pi for a few friends.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Even on a crusty old laptop you can easily serve hundreds of users with Mumble

[–] early_riser@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

IDK, said laptop is from 2010.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 hours ago

Limiting factor will probably be network - if you hook it up with cable, it should be fine

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've got a Mumble server running on a little Linux container in my home lab.

Easy to set up and configure, very stable. Nothing special, it does what it is supposed to do, be a low latency, stable voip system, and it does great.

[–] Anon518@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

In order for people to connect to it you have to give them your home IP right? The mumble server's IP is your home IP?

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago

I use Tailscale and share out that server machine's tailscale IP with just my gaming buddies.

But if you wanna live dangerously, you can port forward from your router to your internal mumble server.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 8 hours ago

Yes, like with everything else you self host.

You could also use some paid service like Cloudflare if you want to hide it for some reason.

But generally people are overly protective of their home IP. What's the danger? DDoS?

People know my physical address but my house hasn't been burned down yet..

[–] pemptago@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Afaik you'd have to open a port and port forward for that to work, and you'd have to update every time your ip changes, unless you have a domain linked to it. There's lots of other configurations, too: VPN/tailscale or equivalent onto your home network, a vps, reverse proxy, etc. I've yet to decide how to access from outside my home. Still tinkering locally, but mumble would be fun to try one day.

[–] Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago

I just use my (static) IP directly with port forwards on my router.

Sure, I get hundreds of login attempts every day, but that's just life on the internet. Just secure your stuff and you're fine.

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[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fluxer is of particular interest to the folks here at AN. We've talked a bit about exploring it once they finish work on federation.

[–] ZealotOfLuna@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago

That’s a primary focus of the app after stability. The dev was able to hire on a co-developer, so hoping to see the project accelerate

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (7 children)

It comes down to Fluxer and Stoat. Or just Stoat if you dislike Fluxer's AI-assisted development.

One thing is clear, both are currently working great and are the closest thing to Discord's core features.

[–] nfreak@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It's definitely going to be one of these two. Matrix and XMPP are just too much for casual users, and there's no one client for either of them which supports all of Discord's core features.

Out of those two, Fluxer feels like the better choice right now, but I do wish they'd take a stronger stance against LLMs. Stoat feels clunkier, buggier, and feels like it's getting left behind.

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[–] MrTolkinghoen@lemmy.zip 5 points 21 hours ago

Pretty surprised to not see mumble mentioned. It's mostly a voice chat replacement. But the low latency chat works so damn well and easy to self host.

[–] zoe@piefed.social 9 points 1 day ago

I hope we get encrypted hosting sites that can help people do easy automated setups. A bunch of people want something that is just create a server and go. I know several discord admins that aren't really hardware and self hosting literate.

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